European Union Action Research Articles

Constructing European Neighborhood: Critical Perspectives from EU-Ukraine Interaction and Civil Society Actors

ABSTRACTHow can EU actorness be conceptualized within the context of Neighborhood? The central purpose of this essay is to contribute a “bottom-up” and more contextually sensitive perspective to the critical assessment of European Union actorness and, in this way, also contribute to a more inclusive understanding of Neighborhood as a regional cooperation project. In doing this, the essay also deals with local Ukrainian rather than EU-centric perspectives on the EU’s more general societal impacts. Based on research that specifically targeted civil society actors in Ukraine with clear pro-EU sympathies the essay explores the ambivalent nature of the European Union as a political actor on the international scene. This also includes perceptions of the evolving quality of the EU’s social and political influence. Rather than pre-supposing a specific geopolitical role for the EU within the so-called Neighborhood, this contribution will emphasize perceived contradictions and contested political and socio-cultural underpinnings of EU cooperation policies. At the same time, the paper will also indicate the ways in which local actors interpret the EU as a potential promoter of greater intercultural dialogue and social transformation. While the picture that emerges is one of a policy divide between the EU and Ukraine, spaces for social engagement and dialogue nevertheless exist and urgently need to be developed.

Synergies among social safeguards in FLEGT and REDD + in Cameroon

Two key international policy processes have been developed to combat illegal logging and promote the contribution of forests to climate change mitigation in developing countries: the European Union's Action Plan on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) and its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change policy on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). The implementation of these policies raises concerns about unintended adverse effects on the environment and local peoples' livelihoods. To prevent such effects, both processes involve developing country-level safeguards, so that they ‘do no harm’. This paper presents (i) a comparison of the social safeguards of the FLEGT-VPA and REDD+ processes and an explanation of their commonalities and differences, and (ii) an exploration of the potential synergies and the challenges to realizing them. The three main research methods used in the study were semi-structured interviews, content analysis of policy documents, and focus group discussions with local communities and indigenous peoples in south and east Cameroon. Our analysis shows that whereas FLEGT-VPA includes legality-based safeguards with legally binding monitoring and reporting obligations, REDD+ adopts a right-based approach to safeguards. Potential synergies between the two approaches were identified. The synergies lie in the participatory nature of the process of designing benefit sharing mechanisms, strengthening forest and land tenure, and defining the criteria and indicators in FLEGT-VPA and REDD+ safeguards. However, realizing the synergies is challenging, given the existing political economy of Cameroon.

Trade, investment, development: The EU perspective on voluntary assurance schemes

Sustainable development is at the core of European Union (EU) action both at home and around the word. This is a principle enshrined in the provisions of the EU Treaty and an objective guiding all of our different policies – whether we are working on the internal market, on our relations with partner countries or on global matters.

Multi-arena players in the making? Conceptualizing the role of national parliaments since the Lisbon Treaty

ABSTRACTOver the last years, the role of national parliaments (NPs) in the European Union (EU) has been upgraded in several ways, most importantly through the Early Warning System (EWS) and a new role in Treaty revisions established by the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL). These provisions formally turn national legislatures into EU actors in their own right that can act both individually and collectively at the EU level, as well as independently of their national governments. As a result, the EU legislative process now presents them with multiple arenas in which they can be simultaneously active – a perspective so far neglected in the literature. The aim of this research agenda is therefore threefold: to take stock of the impact of these provisions by contrasting the formal structures and the actual involvement of NPs; to propose a conceptualization of this new role of NPs in EU affairs as ‘multi-arena players’; and to sketch new avenues for research.

Mass Youth Migration from Sub-Saharan Africa (2002-2015): An Assessment of the European Union Action Plan

Over the last decade, European governments and international organizations have increasingly turn attention on the deaths of thousands of young Sub-Saharan Africans undertaking perilous journeys to Europe to escape the scourges of poverty, conflict, and leadership and governance failure. The increasing alarm made the phenomenon a major international policy challenge for the European Union (EU) and its African partners. Policy makers, researchers, academics, and civil society organizations have also played an important role in raising awareness. This article provides an assessment of the European Union Action Plan on migration from Sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that European Union control mechanisms have failed to address poverty, conflict and state failure as the root causes of youth migration from Sub-Saharan Africa. To examine the exodus, the paper gives a background of migration trend in the first part. Second, it provides a conceptual analysis of migration, refugees, internal displacement and state failure. Third, the paper analyzes the triggers of migration. Fourth, the paper provides an assessment of the European Union regional wide anti-migration response mechanisms. Fifth, it provides policy recommendations in the context of an international security multidimensional developmental approach.

Council Level Opposition A Red Flag or a Paper Tiger: Patient Rights Compliance in Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands

Do Member States who oppose directives in the Council comply worse than those who don’t? Council level opposition is perceived to be a clear proxy for a national conflict with European legislation and subsequent poor compliance is dubbed “opposition through the back door”. However, previous research on this issue is predominantly quantitative and only deals with transposition timeliness or ensuing infringements from the Commission. This research undertakes a distinctly qualitative approach to compare compliance with the Patients’ rights Directive, in Austria (which blocked the Directive), Denmark and the Netherlands. Additionally, we also examine the impact of the misfit argument, since the Danish healthcare system’s misfit with the Directive is greater than that in Austria or the Netherlands. This study is based on expert interviews with representatives from the major institutions in Austria, and literature sources on compliance in Denmark and the Netherlands. Our findings indicate that Council level opposition does not predicate worse compliance. Furthermore, although Denmark’s system has greater difficulty implementing the Directive, compliance issues were limited to specific provisions. The study is informative of compliance with European Union action in healthcare policy and the impediments the Union faces, as it attempts to expand its role into this core national competence.

Counterfeiting and terrorism

Identifying and cutting off terrorists’ access to funding has become a key priority for the international community. It is thus not surprising that while the United Nations, the European Union, G8 and others present action plans to dry up financial sources for terrorists, right-holder organizations remind the authorities and policymakers of the links between counterfeiting and terrorism. The French right-holders’ association Union des Fabricants (Unifab) has presented a report on ‘Counterfeiting & Terrorism’ (available at: http://www.unifab.com/images/ Rapport-A-Terrorisme-2015_GB.pdf) in which they highlight the proven links between counterfeiting and terrorism. The thoroughly documented report presents the involvement of several terrorist organizations in counterfeiting activities, explains the reasons for this choice and recommends further actions. We learn, for example, that Mokhtar Belmokhtar the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (Aqmi), responsible for several recent attacks in West Africa, has the nickname ‘Mr Marlboro’ because large parts of his activities are financed by counterfeit and contraband tobacco products. What is more astonishing is that the Kouachi brothers— the terrorists involved in the Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo—were under the surveillance of the French antiterrorist police, until the monitoring of their telephone conversations revealed that they were setting up a business involving counterfeit clothing and sports shoes. This is when the police surveillance was stopped because, according to the officers, they were leaving the terrorist world to focus on petty crime. Only a few months later the Kouachi brothers burst into the newsroom of Charlie Hebdo. Some of the weapons used in the attacks were financed by the counterfeiting activity and the Director-General of French Customs confirmed that in this particular case there were ‘close links between counterfeiting and the financing of terrorism’. This specific example shows how regrettable it is that public authorities categorize counterfeiting as a ‘petty crime’ while in reality, it represents a major funding method for organized crime in general and terrorism in particular. The Unifab report shows that the conflict in Syria is partially financed by the traffic of counterfeit amphetamines, which are very popular with consumers in the Middle East and those fighting in the conflict. In Syria, the money obtained from the sale of these counterfeit amphetamines enables forces to arm themselves, while the—albeit fake— medicine is used by fighters who see it as a way to withstand many hours in battle, without fear or fatigue. In relation to the Paris attacks of 13 November 2015, the links are less obvious: the report points out that some of the terrorists come from the Belgian city Molenbeek, which is considered as a notorious place of radicalization, and the report cites the mayor of Molenbeek, who expressly links delinquency such as drug trafficking, counterfeiting and offences to social law with the phenomenon of radicalization. In this particular case one can only ‘feel the link’, but the suspicions are not established beyond reasonable doubt. Then again, this is probably due to the fact that both terrorism and counterfeiting remain illegal activities which are carried out underground. To stay with the example of Molenbeek—which I know very well since I regularly assist my clients with seizures of counterfeit products in this part of Brussels—it is clear that counterfeiting and other delinquency are widespread in this community. However, to conclude from there that this leads to radicalization and ultimately to terrorism is less obvious. Having said that, there will inevitably be instances where candidates for the jihad engage in counterfeiting or piracy to make ‘quick money’ to finance a trip to terrorist camps or for their terrorist ventures like the Kouachi brothers did in France. The Unifab report clearly shows why counterfeiting is a ‘logical choice’ for terrorists—and other malicious individuals—who are out for quick money while taking a low risk. The report demonstrates that counterfeiting is a highly lucrative activity in comparison to other criminal activities, such as drug dealing or human trafficking, while the stakes are low for those who are caught. This is due in part to the fact that the legislation in place in most countries is not sufficiently dissuasive, that penalties are rarely enforced and are often well below the maximum that the law provides for. The report rightly concludes that the gap between the reality of counterfeiting and its treatment by national, European and international institutions is almost unreal!

Use of acute and chronic ecotoxicity data in environmental risk assessment of pharmaceuticals.

For many older pharmaceuticals, chronic aquatic toxicity data are limited. To assess risk during development, scale-up, and manufacturing processes, acute data and physicochemical properties need to be leveraged to reduce potential long-term impacts to the environment. Aquatic toxicity data were pooled from daphnid, fish, and algae studies for 102 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) to evaluate the relationship between predicted no-effect concentrations (PNECs) derived from acute and chronic tests. The relationships between acute and chronic aquatic toxicity and the n-octanol/water distribution coefficient (D(OW)) were also characterized. Statistically significant but weak correlations were observed between toxicity and log D(OW), indicating that D(OW) is not the only contributor to toxicity. Both acute and chronic PNEC values could be calculated for 60 of the 102 APIs. For most compounds, PNECs derived from acute data were lower than PNECs derived from chronic data, with the exception of steroid estrogens. Seven percent of the PNECs derived from acute data were below the European Union action limit of 0.01 μg/L and all were anti-infectives affecting algal species. Eight percent of available PNECs derived from chronic data were below the European Union action limit, and fish were the most sensitive species for all but 1 API. These analyses suggest that the use of acute data may be acceptable if chronic data are unavailable, unless specific mode of action concerns suggest otherwise.

European Union Legislation and Actions

European Union Legislation and Actions

European Union legislation and Actions

European Union legislation and Actions

European Union legislation and Actions

European Union legislation and Actions

European Union Legislation and Actions

European Union Legislation and Actions

The EU's Competence Gap in Public Health and Non-Communicable Disease Policy

The European Union (EU) has had a Treaty competence in the field of public health since 1993, however the slow development of this competence has not kept up with the rate at which the EU's policy ambitions in public health have developed, especially in the field of non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention. This has led the EU to rely on alternative legal bases in order to realise these ambitions, leading to a ‘competence gap’ between the legal bases that authorise EU action on NCD prevention and the policies the EU would like to pursue. This paper will explore, in three stages, how this competence gap might be addressed. First, it will examine the arguments for and against giving the EU public health competences. Second, it will analyse the EU's specific public health competence in Article 168 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and the general internal market harmonisation competence in Article 114 TFEU, in order to explore the precise boundaries of each competence as legal bases for EU public health action. Third, it will explore the legal relationship between Articles 168 and 114 and explain why, despite a more powerful specific public health competence being a theoretically neat solution to the competence gap, the likelihood of the EU being given increased public health powers is low.

Functional Actorness? Border Security in the EU and Turkey

The European Union (EU) has fortified its external borders using a number of measures including the creation of new institutions and networks such as FRONTEX and EUROSUR. In non-EU countries such as Turkey, border security is being reorganized with EU support and cooperation. By combining the literature on EU actorness and neo-functionalism, I provide a theoretical toolkit to critically unpack these new developments through conceptualizing multiple dimensions of what I call functional actorness. The contribution analyzes how the functional transformation of EU and Turkish border security has produced a number of side effects which are critically appraised.

The EU and Its Neighbourhoods: A Textual Analysis on Key Documents of the European Neighbourhood Policy

Over the last twenty years, European Union (EU) actorness at both regional and global scales, has become a fruitful topic of analysis in the field of political science, and more specifically in international relations and political geography. Critical geopolitics dedicated many substantive papers on EU discourses and representations. Our paper aims at providing a complementary way to study texts issued by the EU and to question EU actorness by adopting an approach based on textual analysis. The corpus examined includes the seven communications on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) issued between 2003 and 2013. These communications provide essential information regarding relations between the EU and its immediate neighbours. The textual analysis allows several relevant characteristics of discourses to be highlighted: stability and changes, actors, spaces and scales mentioned. The outcomes of the analysis confirm previous research on the subject: The ENP appears as a bilateral state-centric policy, missing global scale, and neglecting the role of regional powers like Turkey or Russia.

Populists in government? Hungary's “system of national cooperation”

This article considers Hungary's political system from 2010 to 2014 with Fidesz in power and domestic and international actors’ responses to the challenge of populists-in-government. The article argues that domestic responses were weakened by Fidesz’ use of its supermajority for a partisan redrafting of the country's constitutional order, but also by its mainstream competitors’ failure to offer a contrasting yet positive vision for the electorate. External actors, and the European Union (EU) in particular, may therefore have emerged as the main bulwark against the effects of populists-in-government. However, the EU was relatively ill-equipped to deal with systemic violations of the common values of the Union with respect to its member states, and arguably even the available measures were not used to their full potential. The main explanation for this lies in Fidesz’ origins: rather than starting its life on the fringes of the electoral space, the party had been the major, mainstream centre-right alternative. This position in Hungary's party system had in turn endowed Fidesz with strong transnational links which outlasted the party's own transformation and continued to act to dampen EU action.

Countering terrorism in Europe: the role of the EU

Since September 2001, the European Union (EU) has developed a cross-institutional, multilevel and multifaceted approach to the fight against terrorism in parallel with efforts to build a strategic concept regarding its security identity. EU counter-terrorism encompasses instruments of different natures and the participation of several institutions and agencies, gathering a wide range of different policy areas. Over the last decade, the EU has emerged as a relevant counter-terrorism actor in Europe encompassing both internal and external instruments. EU action in countering terrorism is developed together with a legal dimension whose importance has been reinforced by the action of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Parliament. The article combines sociological institutionalist theory with constitutionalism to present elements for an innovative assessment of the EU as a counter-terrorism actor in Europe. It draws on policy and judicial developments from the last 14 years, and it argues that the constitutional foundations of the EU contribute decisively to the definition and mode of action of its counter-terrorism policy. This process distinguishes EU action on counter-terrorism particularly from other international counter-terrorism actors and adds new elements to assessing EU’s actorness in the broader field of security.

A test of European Union post-accession influence: comparing reactions to political instability in Romania

The positive role of the European Union (EU) in the democratization process in post-communist countries has been amply documented. The pre-accession conditionality was to a large extent the tool used to enhance adoption of norms, and implementation of policy. In this context, it is less clear what happens after countries join the EU and conditionality is no longer an option. This article seeks to provide an answer by analysing how the EU can influence democratic governance after accession of a new member state. In particular, it focuses on the reactions of EU actors in two institutional conflicts (the 2007 and 2012 presidential impeachment referendums) in Romania. The main findings indicate how EU leverage on domestic politics remains possible, though the effectiveness of involvement, monitoring and evaluation of respect for democratic principles depends on a complex interaction of international and domestic actors.

The European Union’s Potential Contribution to Protect Marine Biodiversity in the Changing Arctic: A Roadmap

This article provides a roadmap for possible European Union (eu) action in the protection of marine biodiversity in the changing Arctic. First the eu’s competence in the Arctic is briefly introduced. Then the discussion turns to the eu’s potential external and internal actions in shipping, fisheries and offshore oil and gas operations that could possibly enhance the international legal regime for the protection of marine biodiversity in the Arctic. The eu’s role vis-à-vis the global biodiversity regime and cross-cutting measures under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea are discussed together in the final part.

Time, consensus and implementation: challenges for effective knowledge exchange.

The necessity of allocating available, and often scarce, resources to effective interventions 1 has increased awareness of the importance of having a sound evidence base to inform decision-making. For example, the European Union Drug Strategy and Action Plans and regional drug strategies call for the implementation of evidence-based policies 2. These developments present an opportunity for the adoption of evidence-based guidelines such as those mentioned by Davoli et al. 3 and published by the World Health Organization (WHO). In addition, they put pressure on the organizations that disseminate systematic reviews and guidelines to promote knowledge exchange and enable informed decision-making 4. Nevertheless, important obstacles remain to be solved before the Cochrane and Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations (GRADE) method for developing evidence-based guidelines becomes the gold standard for guidelines in the field of drug addiction. These obstacles pertain to three main dimensions, which will be discussed below: (1) time, (2) consensus and (3) implementation. No matter how fast and adequate is the identification, assessment and synthesis of evidence, it will never catch up with the new demand for knowledge. The time allowed for decision-making, at individual or at political level, is short compared with the time required for accurate systematic reviewing and recommendation development. This is especially true for emerging problems such as new psychoactive substances and new patterns of drug use where, even in the absence of consolidated evidence, decisions need to be taken quickly 5. The handbook of the Cochrane Collaboration 6 states that it generally takes 12 months to conduct a systematic review. If, in practice, this is a theoretical quantity, because systematic reviews require longer efforts, for decision-making this is an incommensurable time (for example, the rotating Presidencies of the Council of the European Union have a 6-month time-span 7). In order to enable informed decision-making, it is necessary to invest in rapid methods to identify and assess the available evidence and to communicate the uncertainties and knowledge gaps. The guidelines development panels ensure consensus among participants by disclosing conflicts of interest, assessing the level of the evidence and determining the strength of the recommendations. These panels are composed of methodologists performing systematic reviewing and clinicians with practical knowledge derived from contact with patients. The first group of professionals assess and synthesize the evidence (and assign the level of confidence in the available evidence) and the second group of professionals endorse the level of evidence. Finally, together they draft the recommendations and determine the strength [3: Table 4]. In order to reach a final agreement on the recommendations, some negotiations take place within the panel. These negotiations are a crucial aspect of the translation of evidence into recommendations for practice. The question is whether or not these negotiations have a rational base. In other words, do the methodologists determine the impact of evidence-informed treatment on real patients? Do the clinicians believe that the statistical inferences from a meta-analysis apply to their patients? Recent research from other fields of knowledge has raised doubts concerning the rationality of decisions by experts 8 that are worth considering. The third critical element in the Cochrane and GRADE methodology for developing guidelines in drug addiction is the implementation aspect. The tables of evidence proposed by the GRADE Working Group to synthesize the results of systematic reviews are extremely complicated and are difficult to apply in practice. Research shows that most guidelines have little impact in practice 9 and, apparently, one of the main obstacles to implementation is lack of clarity. Methods to ensure implementability of guidelines 10 should be incorporated into the development process, ensuring that they do not extend the production time. The Cochrane GRADE method is a step forward for guidelines development in the addiction field, but challenges remain for enabling evidence-informed decision-making. None.